Rob Diaz de VillegasWFSU-TV

In the video above, I say something like “and just like that, RiverTrek was over.” Except, for me, it kept going on for another month as I edited two video segments. This post is the end of my RiverTrek experience. I’ll end it by writing the “update from the field” post I wanted to write but for which I didn’t seem to find time. It was on our last lunch of the trip.

As you can see, we aren’t stretched out on a wide sandbar. We stopped seeing those midway through Day 4. We had to do a little scouting to find a spot where we could all sit somewhat comfortably.

As I paddled in, I brushed against a low branch and found myself snagged on something. Once I noticed what it was, my brain was slow to sort out the correct order of action, which was to stop the kayak and THEN remove the hook. You see these hooks hanging off of low branches along the lower half of the river, often marked with a fluorescent flag to avoid such incidents. I had even gotten footage of a few of them. When Georgia heard that I had been snagged, she gleefully asked “was there any blood?” I guess that’s what I get for making her pose with a bloody finger and the hook that got her and then posting it here a couple of months ago. No blood though, it just snagged my shirt.

I wasn’t the only one with a close call on our lunch break:

Bryan Desloge once again flaunted his uncanny ability to startle venomous snakes. This one had been hanging out under the log where Bryan chose to eat his lunch. When Bryan sat down, it slithered by his feet to hide in the brush. The paddlers among us who were knowledgeable about snakes had a hard time identifying it, feeling that looked like a cottonmouth but that the coloration was wrong. Had Bryan discovered a new subspecies? After the trip, Doug Alderson wrote no less of a snake expert than Dr. Bruce Means, who confirmed that it was a cottonmouth. “That drab, rusty/muddy color on a cottonmouth is pretty common in muddy rivers.” wrote Dr. Means, “I see it a lot in [the] Apalachicola, Choctawhatchee, and Escambia rivers. I think it is dried silt on the snake’s back. When I catch one and wet it, the natural colors come out but then the snake
gets drab again when dry.”

We ended lunch by looking at these tracks in the sand. These were even more difficult to identify than the snake. Consulting his field guide, Doug concluded that they were mink tracks. It was surprising to most of us that mink lived along the Apalachicola, but that just goes to show you why it’s considered a biodiversity hotspot.

So now, a month later, RiverTrek is over but the problems in the river, basin, and bay remain. As my In the Grass, On the Reef collaborator Dr. David Kimbro gears up to further investigate the oyster reefs in the bay, our focus when it comes to Apalachicola will shift there. But while our primary area of concern is estuarine ecosystems, our EcoAdventure segments do lead us inland and up rivers. So, we’re likely to be back on the River on this blog.

Related Links

For more information on the Apalachicola RiverKeeper, visit their web site. (They’re also on Facebook).

The Army Corps of Engineers is updating the Apalachicola/ Chattahoochee/ Flint Master Water Control Manual, and they are taking public input. You can let your voice be heard here.

The Franklin County Promise Coalition is coordinating aide efforts for families that are being affected in Franklin County through their Bay Aid program. As Dan Tonsmeire told us in his original interview with us back in August, over half of the residents of Franklin County depend on the river for their livelihoods. Learn more about volunteering and other Bay Aid opportunities here.

In the Grass, On the Reef is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Dr. David KimbroFSU Coastal & Marine Lab

Shannon Hartsfield and Colonel Donald Jackson of the Army Corps of Engineers South Atlantic Division look over their catch during an oystering demonstration at Cat Point Bar. This demonstration was meant to show the problems caused by low fresh water input into the bay. Below, David talks about starting to work towards a possible solution.

Tonight on WFSU-TV’s Dimensions program, watch Part 2 of RiverTrek 2012. Tune in at 7:30 PM/ ET on WFSU-TV. In case you missed it, you can watch Part 1 of RiverTrek 2012here.

Spread offense or Power-I formation? Man-to-Man or Zone defense? Austerity or Stimulus spending? And most importantly, Batman or Batgirl?

Whether leading a team of athletes or a population of countrymen, deciders frequently confront such either-or decisions or binary outcomes (i.e., yes or no).

Because time is one of our most limiting resources, natural scientists confront such a dilemma right out of the gate: should I pursue Applied or Basic scientific research?

By applied, I mean research that focuses on immediate solutions to societal problems: How can we deal with a new infectious disease (e.g., avian flu)? Where did the BP oil go?

By basic, I mean research that focuses on improving our knowledge about the nuances of the natural world: How many galaxies are there in the observable universe and how were they formed (I just saw a must-see iMax movie, Hubble 3D, at the JFK Space Center Visitor Complex)? Why is biodiversity so much greater in the tropics?

Flashing back to my childhood hero, I realize that Michael Jordan will likely remain the best basketball player to ever play not solely because of his offense (which was certainly top tier), but also because he worked relentlessly to become a top-tier defender as well. Obviously, few people can master both sides of a spectrum, and sometimes a focus on both or on splitting the difference can come with great cost. For example, my favorite college football team (UNC) is implementing a hybrid defense (i.e., a 4-2-5 instead of a 4-3 or a 3-4) this year; we LOST 68-50 this last Saturday…in FOOTBALL!

Because my plans for playing in the NBA and NFL obviously aren’t working out, let’s get back to science and the merits of focusing on both ends of the science spectrum.

Recently, I talked about this topic with a leading research and clinical Psychologist at Florida State University, Dr. Thomas Joiner. Ignorantly, I thought FSU was only great in Football…turns out that they also have the best Psychology department in the nation. In a recent book Lonely at the Top, Dr. Joiner weaved together many interesting and Basic research studies to show how gender and evolutionary forces cause nuanced interactions all the way from neurons and one’s health to one’s social behavior. It was fascinating to learn how these interactions can promote the loneliness that facilitates suicides.

But while all of these powerful connections lined up well for the main argument of his book, I am equally interested by a conversation we recently shared together about there being many applied problems that can’t wait around for further testing of nuanced ideas. For instance, Dr. Joiner recently began working with the US military to study and reduce the causes of suicide within the military. As Dr. Joiner indicated, the military probably couldn’t give a darn about Basic research findings. They just want some realistic solutions and they want them yesterday.

If you stuck it out this far, you are probably wondering, “how does this relate to oysters, predators, etc.?” Well, the motivation of my Basic research is to increase our knowledge about how predators keep the lights on for many of the natural systems that we depend on like oyster reefs, salt marshes and seagrass beds. But in pursuing this research over the past three years, I have confronted a very important applied problem that needs immediate solutions: the oyster fishery of Apalachicola, Florida presently contains too few oysters to support the local economy (Download a PDF of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services report here).

So, if you follow this blog, you’ll get to see whether my attempt to be like Mike (if you’ve seen my vertical leap, it’s obvious we’re talking research and not b-ball), to emulate the approach of Dr. Joiner, and to split the Applied–Basic difference is a success or a bust. I’ll be working with a lot of good researchers (Florida Sea Grant, UF Oyster Recovery Task Force), state organizations – Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (FDACS) and Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)- and the local community to examine the following:

David accompanies FDACS on a sampling trip in Apalachicola Bay as part of a new collaboration.

(1) How in the heck do you work in such a large and logistically challenging system?

(2) What is the extent of the problem…how far gone is the resource?

(3) After getting some research under our belts, what our some realistic options to this problem?

(4) Because we all want answers to these questions yesterday, can we explore the existing data, which was impressively collected by FDACS for the past 30 years, to get a head start?

Finally, I suspect that this Applied perspective may help inform the merits of my Basic interests. There are a ton of things that could be contributing to the failure of the oyster fishery such as climate change, drought, fresh-water extraction, over-harvesting, disease, nutrient inputs, and water quality. Whether or not any of our predator ideas help explain the lost of this fishery represents a very big test. In other words, relative to other explanations, is all of this predator stuff really important?

Ok, as the locals along the Forgotten Coast say “let’s get’er done”.

Best,
David

Take the RiverTrek 2012 photo tour down the Apalachicola River. You can zoom in and scroll across the map for greater detail. Later we’ll post a map with more of the basin and bay as well, from our other EcoAdventures in the area (River Styx, Graham Creek, etc.). Also, many of the locations are approximate. We did not geotag the location of every houseboat on the river, but the photos do show up in the same general vicinity (with the exception of more recognized landmarks such as Sand Mountain, Alum Bluff, etc.).

Related Links

For more information on the Apalachicola RiverKeeper, visit their web site. (They’re also on Facebook).

The Army Corps of Engineers is updating the Apalachicola/ Chattahoochee/ Flint Master Water Control Manual, and they are taking public input. You can let your voice be heard here.

The Franklin County Promise Coalition is coordinating aide efforts for families that are being affected in Franklin County through their Bay Aid program. As Dan told us in his original interview, over half of the residents of Franklin County depend on the river for their livelihoods. Learn more about volunteering and other Bay Aid opportunities here.

In the Grass, On the Reef is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Rob Diaz de VillegasWFSU-TV

RiverTrekkers climb into Means Creek, named for biologist Bruce Means.

The web version of the video, which you see above, has some shots of our impromptu spelunking expedition by Means Creek that were not in the air version. I was waiting on permission to show our cave adventure, which was in a part of Torreya State Park that we were told will be opened to the public at some point in the future. I got that permission after last week’s Dimensions had been completed. You may notice that, for a video about a kayak trip, we spend a lot of time in caves, bushwhacking in the woods, or climbing up bluffs. None of our off-river excursions were in lands open to the public, but were instead near parklands that were (Means Creek in Torreya and Alum Bluff on The Nature Conservancy’s Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve, near the Garden of Eden Trail). With those parks in the northern stretch of the river and the Apalachicola Wildlife and Environmental Area in the south, there are ample opportunities to explore the areas adjacent to the river. Those protected lands are valuable for their ecotourism potential, but they have a indirect value when it comes to the water in the river, in Apalachicola Bay, and into the Gulf of Mexico.

It has to do with clean (or cleaner, anyway) water. I wrote last week about the Army Corps of Engineers visit to Apalachicola Bay, and the meeting during which various presenters made their case for the why the river needed more water than has been flowing through the Woodruff Dam. One presentation that left an impression was that of Dr. Felicia Coleman, Director of the FSU Coastal and Marine Lab. She was showing how the water flowing from the Apalachicola River had positive effects beyond the bay, and she made an interesting contrast. She was comparing the “green river” plumes from both the Apalachicola and Mississippi Rivers, the two largest North American sources of freshwater in the Gulf. Along with the fresh water, they contribute chlorophyll and other nutrients. There is a striking difference in what each river is putting into the Gulf.

“The two sources are quite different, because one is man made, agricultural… excess nutrients are falling into the Gulf” Dr. Coleman said, referring to the Mississippi, “and the other is a natural nutrient base that’s coming into the bay,” referring to the Apalachicola. The Mississippi River drains 41% of the continental United States, along with considerable nitrogen and phosphorus such as are found in concentrated fertilizers typically used to grow crops and and keep lawns green. The areas at the mouth of the Mississippi have been heavily developed, so there aren’t the kinds of coastal ecosystems that would filter these nutrients (though as David Kimbro pointed out to me, the sheer volume of runoff from the Mississippi is greater than what these coastal ecosystems could filter). All of that nitrogen and phosphorous was of course meant to make plants grow, and a farmer can control how fertilizer is applied to get crops to grow how they want and to maximize their yield. When it runs off of farms and lawns and into the water, you can’t control what plants grow and how fast. If phytoplankton gets a super dose of nitrogen, its growth can become unchecked and it can suck the oxygen out of water. Dr. Coleman estimated that the dead zone off of the Mississippi is about the size of New Jersey.

Shrimp boats in Apalachicola, at the very end of RiverTrek 2012.

So, that’s me taking a hike on Alum Bluff and trying to make it about the oysters in the bay. But there is a connection to the bay, and as Felicia Coleman illustrated, beyond the bay and into the Gulf. Gag and red grouper are commercially important fish that are caught in waters that are about 60 feet deep. They spawn when the green river plume is at its seasonal peak (the flow of the river is not constant). Dr. Coleman presented a map that showed the greatest concentration of grouper spawning happened within that plume. So the water flow, which is at an all time low (since people have started measuring it), is crucial to that fishery as well as to the shrimp, crab, and oyster fisheries of the bay. “If you look at rivers around the world that have had intense fresh water withdrawals,” Dr. Coleman said, “There have been some of the most spectacular fishery failures that we know about, in a global sense.”

Riverlinks

I’m not the only one publishing blog posts on RiverTrek 2012. My fellow paddler (and author) Doug Alderson wrote this post for his Visit Tallahassee blog.

The Army Corps of Engineers is updating the Apalachicola/ Chattahoochee/ Flint Master Water Control Manual, and they are taking public input. You can let your voice be heard here.

Stay tuned for Part II of the RiverTrek Adventure on Wednesday November 14 at 7:30 PM/ ET as we complete our journey to the bay.

Rob Diaz de VillegasWFSU-TV

Slideshow: Army Corps of Engineers visit Apalachicola Bay

Tonight on WFSU’s Dimensions: Part 1 of the RiverTrek 2012 Adventure. Days one and two of paddling, camping, hiking and climbing air at 7:30 PM/ ET with an encore on Sunday, October 28 at 10 AM/ ET. The trip concludes with Part 2 (Days 3-5) on Wednesday, November 14 at 7:30 PM/ET.

The slideshow above was photographed on Monday, when Army Corps of Engineers colonels were invited (along with state agency officials and media) to see firsthand how depleted the oyster reefs in Apalachicola Bay have become. We went out in three oyster boats, captained by the leadership of the Franklin County Seafood Workers Association, to the Cat Point bar. Cat Point is usually one of the most productive winter reefs in the bay. In early September, the Summer reefs closer to the mouth of the river are closed and the Winter reefs further out are opened up. The Winter reefs should have spent months replenishing and younger oysters should have matured into legal sized, commercially viable oysters. Only this year, it didn’t happen.

Shannon Hartsfield, President of the Association, takes a few licks with his oyster tongs and then hands the them to Colonel Donald Jackson. Colonel Jackson takes a few licks; between the two of them they take about eight. Hartsfield inspects their catch: about six legal oysters in a pile of dead shell. Later he tells me that in past years, that amount of work would have yielded about a 30 lb. bag of legal oysters. This is what the Army Corps of Engineers colonels were invited to see. The Corps controls the flow of water in the Apalachicola/ Flint/ Chattahoochee basin, directing water into over 200 reservoirs and adjusting how much flows through dams. The lack of water flowing from the Apalachicola River, due in large part to the drought we’ve experienced over the last couple of years, is the main cause of the fishery crisis. The oystering demonstration is the Franklin County Seafood Workers’ argument for more water to be allowed through Woodruff Dam at the Florida/ Georgia border.

The wrangling over this water is often portrayed as between seafood workers in the bay and Georgia’s farmers and Atlanta’s water consumers. But the list of stakeholders also contains power companies (hydroelectric and nuclear), MillerCoors LLC, manufacturers, and recreational concerns, to name a few (see the full list here). It’s messy. And change doesn’t look like it’s coming soon. As the colonels said during the community meeting later that night at the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve, they are soldiers following a protocol. A new protocol (an update to the ACF Master Water Control Manual) is being drawn up, but changes will not take effect for 2-3 years, and in the meantime there isn’t a lot of leeway for how the water can be redirected, at least not by the Army Corps of Engineers’ authority (The U.S. Legislature grants them the authority they have). They are taking public input for the Manual Update, you can send your comments here.

During that meeting, presenters from different agencies, universities, and local concerns laid out the impact of the low water flow on the bay and on the river basin. The next day, the colonels would be going up the river to see the effects of low flow there, where I had just paddled a week-and-a-half ago in the video that airs tonight. My interest had been, as a main focus of the In the Grass, On the Reef project is oyster reef ecology, the bay and how the lack of river flow had affected it. As Helen Light said to us on the first night of the trek “You all know a lot about the bay, and the impacts in the bay, you’ve been reading it in the paper.” That night, gathered around her on the sand bar across from Alum Bluff, she proceeded to tell us about the effects on the river. She had studied the floodplain for decades while working for the US Geological Survey, and has seen the changes undergone as river flow has decreased over the last few decades. I keep going back to her talk in the video, much as we did in our conversations kayaking down the river. Even as we were falling in love with the river (or reconnecting with it), we learned of its struggles and the troubles it was facing.

For all of the statistics on the decline of the river, it was still a beautiful paddle. The fish were jumping, eagles soared overhead, turtles sat on logs- and as we reported, there were plenty of snakes. We got off the river, too, to see some of the creeks, swamps, and forest around it. For all its troubles, the river is still enjoyable, as are its products. There has been a 44% decline in Ogeechee Tupelo trees along the river since 1976, but you can still buy tupelo honey produced from the trees in the river basin. And at the reception after the community meeting on Monday, the same day I saw oystermen pull dead shell off the floor of the bay, there were trays of healthy looking Apalachicola oysters on the half shell. As tourists and consumers, it can be easy to dismiss the stats when our own eyes (and taste buds) tell us everything looks normal.

Rob Diaz de VillegasWFSU-TV

On every RiverTrek Day wrap-up post I wrote about what I heard while I lay in my sleeping bag that morning. This morning it was the buzzing of my alarm, and then I strained to hear anything else. Walls do a much better job keeping sound out than the thin fabric of a tent. Eventually I hear that gentle hum of cars and trucks. Today’s trash day, so I know garbage and recycling trucks are coming.

Back to a more technologically civilized existence. That means I can upload all the posts that wouldn’t make it from the tablet while using Rick’s or Micheal’s phones as hotspots. And I can add a lot more photos. The blog software lets you fudge the dates, so everything can show up in order and you can start at the beginning and look at what we saw along the way. The best way to see it all would be to go back to what is currently page 3 and keep scrolling over the posts (every new post will push them down, so this won’t be true for more than a few weeks). Or you can just jump to the beginning and go post by post.

I am fortunate and honored that I was invited to participate in this year’s event. I hope we do it justice in these posts and in the two video segments set to air on WFSU’s dimensions program (and which I’ll post here). There may be other bits and pieces to post as well. We saw and learned a lot.

And I do want to thank everyone who helped me with the production side of things. Georgia already thanked the support team, and I want to reiterate that. Thanks Eddie, Mitch, Fred, Dawn and Rick. Thanks as well to Captain Gill on the support boat, and a big thanks to Dan Tonsmeire for taking a videographer for two days and showing him the river (and for so many other things as well).

Thanks to WFSU videographer Dan Peeri and In the Grass, On the Reef Associate Producer Rebecca Wilkerson for your assistance on the production side of things.

Thanks to the paddlers for putting up with the cameras, my lagging behind when I went to get a shot, and the occasional bump from my boat. And for making me feel welcome in this group. Thanks to Rick and Micheal for the use of your phones as WiFi hotspots. A big thanks to Georgia for posting diligently and keeping the outside world up to date when technology failed me. Georgia and Doug Alderson did a fantastic job coordinating the trip and picking participants. I can’t say enough about the experience of RiverTrek, and how much there was for us to shoot and write about.

Lastly, I want to thank my wife Amy for letting me go for five days and staying home with an increasingly active toddler.

Rob Diaz de VillegasWFSU-TV

Every morning starts with interesting noises that hear from my sleeping bag. I’ve been spending a lot of time listening, and I always hear other people up coughing, walking around. Camping doesn’t always mean great sleep. This morning, what I heard most was a constant ocean-like noise. I know we were by mile marker 22, still pretty far from the Gulf. I wondered if I could hear the tide, as tidal influence was to be felt not too much further up the river. I asked about that, and was told that perhaps I was hearing the river current.

The one turtle on the Apalachicola that let me get close to it, on the last day.

A few miles into our paddle, we stopped by Fort Gadsden and Doug talked about the historical significance of the place. Built during the War of 1812 by the British, they abandoned it at the conclusion of the war to a group of free blacks, escaped slaves, and various native groups. Negro Fort, as it was then called, was a haven for escaped slaves until US troops fired a cannon ball heated in a stove into the fort’s gunpowder stores. The explosion killed hundreds. Doug had provided us the chapter about Fort Gadsden from his upcoming book on the Seminole Wars. We stopped again at the site of another battle, at Bloody Bluff.

We were to stay closer together today, and keep someone with a map nearby (Doug, Rick, and Chris). Rivers and creeks join and split off from the river in the lower twenty miles, and it would be a lot easier to get lost. The plan was to take one last break at a small beach after the railroad bridge, at mile marker 3 more or less. We would stick close together and paddle in line into the city for the people waiting for us.

The day’s paddling seemed a little slower, as we had an incoming tide and some head wind. We also passed larger boats (including a shrimp boat) that kicked a lot of wake our way. Sometimes it felt like I was paddling in oatmeal. When it came time to get into formation, my lens started fogging up and I had to change cameras and switch my last good battery into the camera I had stashed behind my seat. Georgia is yelling “come on Rob!” but I know I can’t not have this shot. And it’s either video or stills, so I took video.

We were to come out of the main river and turn into the channel that runs alongside the oyster restaurants and Veteran’s Park, where people were waiting for us. As we turned the corner to head to the park, I could see an adult form holding hands with a toddler- it was my wife Amy and my son Max. I told Georgia I saw them and she told everyone, “On the count of three, everyone yell ‘Hi Max!'” As much a I’ve enjoyed this trip, I couldn’t have been any happier to see them.

We got to the park, waved to our friends, family, and well wishers, and all that was left was the race. And these guys don’t play fairly. There was supposed to be a race for anyone who wanted to go touch the Gorrie Bridge. As Georgia was trying to get them organized to start, Rick, Micheal, Josh, and Bryan just took off. I wanted to tape this, but by the time I got my camera recording and turned around to get after them, they were pretty far ahead. It got pretty close, with Rick closer to a beam on the left and Bryan closer to one on the right. Competitive in both paddling and finding venomous snakes, Bryan Desloge took this one.

Commissioner Desloge (L) and Josh Bolick (R) paddle back after the race.

We all gathered at Up the Creek Raw Bar and ate together with each other and our loved ones. We will all be sleeping in beds tonight. We started in the thickest fog and emerged into tall bluffs and wide sandbars, climbing one of the tallest and sleeping on a couple of the sandbars (Estiffanulga sand is still on a lot of my stuff). The bluffs got lower again and creeks and cypress swamps offered interesting side adventures. Men fished and hunted, fishhooks hung from trees, houseboats and floating kennels lined the shores. Herons evaded us, eagles circled overhead, and fish never stopped jumping (I wish I would have been rolling when that pinfish bounced off my bow). Woods give way to marshes and the bay just opened up in front of us. It’s been ten years since I first visited Apalachicola, for WFSU’s Our Town program. I never thought I would enter it this way. As we drove home over the bridge, in the last light of the day, I thought to myself “I can’t believe I just paddled that river.”

For more information on Rivertrek, visit the official page. This page is on the Riverkeeper web site, and you can further explore what they do for the river. (They’re also on Facebook).

The Franklin County Promise Coalition is coordinating aide efforts for families that are being affected in Franklin County through their Bay Aid program. As Dan told us in his original interview, over half of the residents of Franklin County depend on the river for their livelihoods. Learn more about volunteering and other Bay Aid opportunities here.

Georgia AckermanRiverTrek 2012 co-Coordinator

We made it! Big wind on last 10 miles, but it didn’t slow this group down. Thank you to the support crew: Eddie Lueken, Mitch Ross, Fred Borg, Roy Ogles, Dawn Peffer, Rick Peffer, Captain Gil and Lane Autry and Uptown Cafe. We could not have made it without you.

Rob Diaz de VillegasWFSU-TV

The sounds I hear in my tent every morning sort of define where we slept that night. Alum Bluff had the barred owls, Estiffinulga had the rooster and boats launching. Dead Lakes had a low grinding noise that Doug Alderson identified by the campfire after our Wewa chinese dinner. Pine beetles were eating one of the pine trees we were sleeping under. He told Bob, the campsite caretaker, as the tree had to be removed before the beetles spread to other trees.

Before we started the day’s paddling, we stopped to look at the Dead Lakes. A sand bar from the Apalachicola River trapped the Chipola River, killing thousands of trees. These trees are still there. There was a discussion yesterday about some or all of us paddling through the dead lakes into the Chipola, which meets up with the Apalachicola a few miles downstream. In the end, we decided to stay on the Apalach. As beautiful as the Dead Lakes are, we don’t want to miss any part of the River.

This is where the bluffs start getting much shorter and the sand bars get fewer and further between. In fact, for our first break we forewent a restfull sit in the sand for a scramble up Sand Mountain. Sand Mountain was created by the Army Corps of Engineer as they dredged the river. All that sand that was sitting at the bottom of the river was piled up into a 50-60 feet high mound. It takes patience to climb, using hands and feet as the mountain sucked them in. It was a great view if the river.

Doug Alderson, halfway up sand mountain.

Today, Alex Reed and Bryan Desloge rocket off ahead of the pack. Me, I’m still slowing down to shoot things. I envy Jennifer Portman of the Tallahassee Democrat. She’s in a tandem with Chris Robertson, who paddles on without complaint while she stops to take notes, tweet, or take photos. It reduces the risk that you bump someone or get your kayak turned around while changing a battery. Of course, Doug Alderson is taking notes and photos for his Visit Tallahassee blog and possibly for the next book he does on paddling (he’s currently working on a book about the Seminole Wars). He doesn’t seem to have as many problems as I do. He, along with the majority of the paddlers, have guided kayak tours at the Wilderness Way. They know what they’re doing. Me, I’m happy to be here with them and pick up the occasional tip.

Our camp site is down Owl Creek. The bluffs are lower in this part of the river and there are fewer sandbars. I’m not sure what the correlation is. But it does mean we have to paddle a mile-and-a-half off of the river to sleep tonight. It’s a great creek, with a lot of cypress trees including a small island where you can paddle between them. When we get to the camp site, Alex and Bryan say they’ve been there an hour-and-a-half.

Our support team was lights out, with Fred Borg procuring campsites and bringing homemade salsa. Eddie Lueken and her husband Mitch Ross brought us quite a spread. In addition to the delicious machaca (a beef dish), Eddie had made chicken and bean enchiladas, guacamole, and pico de gallo. All home made. This support team has really gone above and beyond for us. Thank you!

Tonight we did ghost stories. Doug Alderson has written a book of ghost stories, as it happens. He performs his stories quite well, he sets everything up and even incorporated Fred’s lantern, which hung by the picnic tables (we went primitive camping the first two nights, Dead Lakes was a country club by comparison, but Hickory Landing is somewhere in between with a rudimentary restroom- a pit toilet with no sink- and no potable water or outlets). He had a hard time getting started with everyone interrupting to ask questions, notably Jennifer- the reporter- asking what kind of shoes he was wearing in his story. These are things I’ll remember about these guys. The little phrases and inside jokes. I’ll never look at a chicken box the same way again.

When everyone went to sleep, I was a little restless and wandered around the campsite. I walked onto the boat ramp and turned my head lamp off and looked straight up. This was the last night of the trip, the last time for a while that I would see all those extra stars that we don’t have in Tallahassee, framed by the silhouettes of the trees at the water’s edge. It was a good last image before going to sleep.

For more information on Rivertrek, visit the official page. This page is on the Riverkeeper web site, and you can further explore what they do for the river. (They’re also on Facebook).

The Franklin County Promise Coalition is coordinating aide efforts for families that are being affected in Franklin County through their Bay Aid program. As Dan told us in his original interview, over half of the residents of Franklin County depend on the river for their livelihoods. Learn more about volunteering and other Bay Aid opportunities here.

Josh: The highlight for me today was to see the terrain and flora/fauna change as we move down the river. Covering the distance we’ve traveled really demonstrates the range of diversity the river supports.

Rick: Sitting beside the campfire tonight after wrapping up our fourth day on the river. I’ve had the opportunity to get a close up view of the Apalach and grow in my appreciation of a real community treasure.

Doug:
Sun glinting off kayaks in morning. Eagles calling–parents teaching young. Flying with a monarch. Humming songs. Achy bones lower back–looking for sandbar cool swim. Powerful river speaking gently to me. Always flowing. Honored to paddle her waters even if for short while.

Alex: Yesterday, I pulled away from the group for about awhile. There I was an hour away from Tallahassee immersed in the sound of birds, the wind and the crickets…. the only human sound was the rhythmic sound of my paddle hitting the water… what a magical place to be.

Mike: Wonderful day on the river. Skied down Sand Mountain. Watched a fish tail so close I could touch it. Talked with hunters getting ready for deer season expressing their concern for the Apalachicola. Enjoying the diversity of our group that shares common ground of reverence of this river.

Micheal: Day four and everyone seems to have found their rhythm. We’ve worked hard to get to this point but now we’re all sad to think this is almost over. I joined this trip to enjoy friends and support the river, but I didn’t expect the education on such a complex issue. Thank you Riverkeeper!

Rob: We’re here at the last campfire of the trip. We’ve developed both a strange communal sense of humor and deep reverence for the river and the land and waterways it supports. Even as I’m distracted by their fireside jokes as I try to type, I know I’m going to miss camping and paddling with these guys.

Georgia: Amazing four days. Incredible journey. Energizing group! 24 miles to go. Thank you Apalachicola River, support team, and Trekkers!

Watch EcoShakespeare Online Now!

Our local ecology helps us to understand Shakespeare's take on nature in a "Midsummer Night's Dream," while his words give us unexpected insight into the wild areas surrounding Tallahassee. Come with us into the Big Woods, a rare tract of old growth longleaf pine flat woods. Join us as we forage form wild edibles by Lake Iamonia. Follow water with us as we trace the issues afflicting Wakulla Springs. It's a different take on the immortal words of the Bard.